MacBride Commission
Th ey exercise ‘the power to represent the world
in certain ways. And because there are many
diff erent and confl icting ways in which meaning
about the world can be constructed, it matters
profoundly what and who gets represented, what
and who regularly and routinely gets left out;
and how things, people, events, relationships are
represented’. See discursive gap; hegemony;
legitimation/delegitimation; power
elite; preferred reading.
Magnum International cooperative agency of
photo-journalists, formed in 1947. Among its
early members were Henri Cartier-Bresson,
Robert Capa, Marc Bresson and Inge Morath.
Magnum’s objectives have been: top-quality
photography, independence, objectivity and
control – by the members – over the use of their
pictures.
▶William Manchester, In Our Time: Th e World as
Seen by Magnum Photographers (Andre Deutsch,
1989).
Mainstreaming George Gerbner and a team
of researchers at the Annenberg School of
Communications, University of Pennsylvania,
conducted a massive and ongoing research proj-
ect throughout the 1980s on the impact of tele-
vision broadcasting on cultural attitudes and
attitude formation. A process is identifi ed that
Gerbner calls mainstreaming, whereby televi-
sion creates a coming-together, a convergence
of attitude among viewers. In their article, ‘Th e
“mainstreaming” of America: violence profile
No. 11’ in Journal of Communication (Summer,
1980), Gerbner, Larry Gross, Michael Morgan
and Nancy Signorielli write, ‘In particular, heavy
viewing may serve to cultivate beliefs of other-
wise disparate and divergent groups towards a
more homogeneous “mainstream” view.’
Th e authors’ opinion is that TV’s images ‘culti-
vate the dominant tendencies of our culture’s
beliefs, ideologies, and world views’ and that
the ‘size’ of an ‘eff ect’ is far less critical ‘than the
direction of its steady contribution’. Th e light
viewer is more likely to hold divergent views and
the heavy viewer more convergent views: ‘For
heavy viewers, television virtually monopolizes
and subsumes other sources of information,
ideas and consciousness.’ Convergence in this
sense is to the world as shown on television.
Returning to this theme in an article for the
American magazine Et cetera (Spring, 1987),
Gerbner writes, in ‘Television’s populist brew:
Th e three Bs’, ‘Th e most striking political diff er-
ence between light and heavy viewers in most
groups is the collapse of the liberal position as
the one most likely to diverge from and challengeM
MacBride Commission International Commis-
sion for the Study of Communication Problems,
chaired by Sean MacBride, former Secretary
General of the International Commission of
Jurists. Its purpose was to deliberate on aspects
of media interaction between Western and
developing nations. In particular, the Commis-
sion was to report on the impact of Western
media technology, and the subsequent fl ow of
Western-orientated information, upon develop-
ing nations.
Set up by the United Nations Educational,
Scientifi c and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
in 1978 with a committee of ‘fi fteen wise men
and one woman’, including Colombian novelist
Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Canadian media
guru Marshall McLuhan, the Commission
produced a 484-page report in 1980.
Th is urged a strengthening of ‘Th ird World’
independence in the field of information-
gathering and transmission, and measures to
defend national cultures against the formidable
one-way fl ow of information and entertainment
from Western capitalist nations, chiefl y the US.
Faced with the antipathy and resistance of such
nations, the Commission’s recommendations,
and their vision of a new world information
order, were left dead in the water. See chapulte-
pec declaration, 1994; information gaps;
media imperialism; talloires declaration,
1981; yamousoukrou declaration. See also
topic guide under global perspectives.
Machinery of representation In modern
societies, the various forms of mass media have
been named the ‘machinery of representation’
by Professor Stuart Hall in his chapter on media
power and class power in Bending Reality: Th e
State of the Media (Pluto Press, 1986), edited
by James Curran, Jake Ecclestone, Giles Oakley
and Alan Richardson. Hall writes of the ‘whole
process of reporting and construction’ through
which reality is translated into media forms
- forms that the audience is expected to recog-
nize as reality.
Yet reality, argues Hall, is not simply tran-
scribed in ‘great unassimilated lumps through
our daily dose of newspapers or our nightly diet
of television’. He is of the opinion that the media
‘all work using language, words, text, pictures,
still or moving; combining in different ways
through the practices and techniques of selec-
tion, editing, montage, design, layout, format,
linkage, narrative, openings, closures – to repre-
sent the world to us’.